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Dessert

Ginger Tablet

A hard candy made from sugar and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Ginger Tablet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar

  1. Clarify the sugar as directed for barley sugar.

  2. Boil the sugar until it reaches candy high; test by dipping a spoon in cold water and then in the boiling sugar; it should hang to the spoon, ropy.

Flavour and set

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the ginger, rubbing it well and breaking knots with the back of the spoon against the pan.

  2. Grease a marble slab with butter and pour the mixture onto it.

  3. Let it cool completely, then score it into dice for decoration, cut into square cakes, and store in boxes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Ginger + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the body of the tablet as it boils down and sets into a hard, glassy sweet.
White ginger
Gives the tablet its characteristic spicy, aromatic flavour.

The step that matters

Testing the sugar's boiling stage. Sugar boiled to candy high sets hard once cool, while under-boiled sugar stays soft and sticky. The cold-water and spoon test shows when the sugar has reached the right concentration, so the tablet will hold its shape.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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